Rooftop highway not realistic solution

Monday, December 31, 2012 - 9:17 am

To the Editor:

Hey rooftoppers, what are you up to now? I guess by any measure you have reset the button on your holy grail of a quest to get the interstate boondoggle going again. Like a voice crying in the wilderness, you have once again made the point that our only salvation is the rooftop highway.

It doesn’t matter that there is no science behind your thinking. You are convinced that plowing through 6,000 acres of homes, barns, fields, woods is the only way to get to the future. It doesn’t matter that the money you have spent on promotion or the money you will spend, now that the St Lawrence County legislature has hired a lobbyist for $5,000 a month plus expenses, comes out of the pockets of county residents.

By the way, expenses are at least a couple of thousand a month.

I know you say that “if we build it they will come” but look around, that is not true. Route 11 is our main corridor (our economic river) and as of this moment all the ducks are in a row to re-structure this road to a rural expressway that will enable a faster, smoother and safer flow through the north country.

Why not get out of the rooftop thinking and see Route 11 as a reasonable and doable project that will provide plenty of jobs over the years and enhance our economy as traffic flows and stops along it.

If reasonable economic development is the goal, then I’m all for it. Dividing our energy between the rooftop highway and the real upgrade to Route 11 is getting us nowhere and even delaying progress on Route 11. If one unified voice came out of Northern NY to get Route 11 into the next gear, we could see more work on our main corridor and that would be a real benefit to our area.